Australia's meteorological networks include about 800 land-surface stations recording a wide variety of weather elements, many thousands of daily rainfall stations, and dozens of weather balloon stations and weather-watch radars. However, not all these data sources are suitable for climate change purposes. Many historical data records are too short or incomplete to calculate reliable trends. Many also have data quality problems that prevent data recorded at different times in the past being directly compared.
The Bureau of Meteorology's climate data experts have carefully analysed available data to create consistent (homogenised) datasets suitable for monitoring Australian long-term climate trends. These datasets and related information are available below.
Australian Climate Observations Reference Network – Surface Air Temperature (ACORN-SAT)
ACORN-SAT employs the latest analysis techniques and takes advantage of newly digitised observational data to provide a daily temperature record over the last 100 years.
Australia's climate change site data
Climate change site data provides access to the homogenised weather station data used to monitor long-term trends in Australia's climate.
Note: The latest homogenised temperature site data is available from ACORN-SAT.
Australia's climate change datasets
Climate change datasets provides access to compressed datasets of homogenised site data used to monitor long-term trends in Australia's climate.
Tropical Cyclone archive for Australia and Southern Hemisphere
TC archive provides historical Tropical Cyclone information for the Australian region and the Southern Hemisphere.